Astros ‘highly unlikely’ to be able to sign Brady Aiken

Scoreboard at Minute Maid Park is as close as Brady Aiken will be to Houston for a while. (Karen Warren / Chronicle)

The Astros are “highly unlikely” to be able to sign first overall draft pick Brady Aiken after the July 18 deadline, according to a person familiar with the situation, who expressed surprise at a report from last week that Aiken could still sign.

Selig on Tuesday was asked by 10News, a San Diego television station, to address Aiken’s situation and Selig said “We’re working on that right now.”

“There are a lot of things in movement there so it would be inappropriate for me to comment,” Selig said, “but I would say we are working towards a hopeful solution.”

According to the source, the commissioner could only have been referring to Jacob Nix, the Astros’ fifth-round draft pick who also went unsigned and has filed a grievance against the Astros. The Astros could be forced to sign Nix by an arbitrator.

But Aiken — as the Chronicle was the first to report last week — has not filed a grievance against the Astros. He has a Sept. 1 deadline to do so, although the deadline could be extended.

The precedent of allowing Aiken to sign would be a risky one — and is a decision that can’t be made unilaterally. The source reiterated the firmness of baseball’s signing deadlines and the impact that Pedro Alvarez and Eric Hosmer’s grievance had in 2008.

“The agreement with the MLBPA also clarifies how the August 15th deadline for signing selections in the First-Year Player Draft will be administered in future years,” MLB wrote in a press release that year announcing Alvarez’s grievance had been resolved. “The agreement makes clear that deadline extensions can be made only by agreement between the Commissioner’s Office and the MLBPA.”